This chapter focusses on Kemalism as the founding ideology of the Turkish Republic and neo-Kemalism, a modified version of the original official ideology formulated after the 1980 military coup, and the ways in which they have understood the meaning of “the West”. The main argument of the chapter is that, original Kemalism had been an unwavering programme of Westernization which idealized “modernity” as the telos of the Turkish nation-state, while neo-Kemalism, or Atatürkçülük, as defined by the September 1980 military regime, opted for a synthesis of Turkishness and Islam, a version of Turkish nationalism with deep historical roots which idealized the “cultural tradition” together with “scientific-technological civilization”. Original Kemalism and Neo-Kemalism of the post-1980 regime were nationalist in the sense that they both wanted to protect the specifically Turkish characteristics of national identity. On this common ground, both regarded the West as “the cultural other”, but Neo-Kemalism’s overemphasis on Islam opened up a space for “reactionary modernism” akin to the totalitarian ideologies in Europe in the 1930s.